Ashgabat: Turkmenistan’s city of dreams and nightmares

One day I saw a piece of rubbish in Ashgabat. I want you to ponder on the significance of that statement: in a whole day of walking around the central part of the city I saw a single, solitary piece of rubbish. Even the Swiss couldn’t manage that! You need the single-minded determination of a dictatorship to achieve this attention to detail. It is difficult to know where to start trying to explain such a city but certainly only a…

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Turkmenistan: a tale of two presidents

What is it with Islam and dictatorships? I sometimes wonder if it’s some kind of test Allah has set for his followers to endure to prove that they are truly worthy of paradise. I don’t expect paradise for myself in this world but I can’t quite grasp why so many other lovely people would need to be subjected to a lifetime of tyranny to qualify for it in the next one. At this rate my odds for the next one…

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